By: Franco Zaro – Director of Business Development and Sales Support
As a good Chilean, I’m a huge fan of football (soccer in American) and I remember the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, it was the year of the Selfie. During Russia’s World Cup in 2018, it was the year of streaming which allowed us to be connected in real-time with the players by following them on Instagram or YouTube. Now the question is….what will be the trending topic during the Qatar 2022 World Cup? After our great experience at the IoT Tech Expo in Silicon Valley, USA in November 2018 interacting with the most innovative industry players, our conclusion and the most likely answer to this questions is the ‘Blockchain of Everything’!
Blockchain was created to support Cryptocurrency which at the time was created as a response to a bank crisis and a general distrust of banks back in the 90’s. But today thanks to technology, Blockchain can be securely applied to not only money transactions but anything that requires more than one single interaction.
What is the secret? Decentralizing and integrating.
Let’s use a bank as an example:
Traditionally a bank is an extremely centralized network in which the bank is the ledger where all our money and transactions are processed, controlled and approved by a single entity. On the other hand, Bitcoin or Cryptocurrency providers use a decentralized model called Blockchain which allows us to have as many copies of this ledger as we want and integrate as many systems or other ledgers as we can through a peer-to-peer network. Each individual transaction is timestamped and recorded in a Blockchain and its evidence is replicated across an entire network of ledgers.
Since every transaction can be anonymous, it provides a complete and seamless track that allows a very secure and private process. In summary, you get the security of a trusted and reputable bank but the freedom and much better rates of a very simple organization. But before Bitcoin can cause a massive, mainstream disruption, there are still many regulations in place that need to be addressed.
Blockchain isn’t just a technology for the financial industry. It has numerous applications for other industries that can revolutionize the way we do business.
For example, imagine you are hiring a moving truck:
- The truck driver is the business owner and he belongs to the same Blockchain network as you. He promised you that the truck will arrive at a specific destination by a certain day (which it is very convenient for you). You will pay him USD $1,000 which is a reasonable amount of money for his convenient service.
- You both agreed if the moving truck arrives one day later than the agreed upon time, you will pay USD $800. If it arrives two days late, you will pay USD $600 which is not a very profitable amount of money for the moving truck business.
- The transaction or payment is processed at the origin point so the truck driver has the security in knowing the money is available, but the final amount will only be active at the moment that the truck has reached the final destination point.
- Since the payment is controlled by a location system, the payment will be automatically active in the moving company’s account after matching the destination point and the date of arrival.
As you can see, this same philosophy can be applied to several industries, connecting providers, producers and consumers in the same real-time, secure, trusted, and reliable network.
At Valid, we have the technology to integrate our IoT solutions and services to any Blockchain-based network supporting agriculture, communications, finance, transportation, mining and many other industries, giving us the ability to contribute to a more connected and decentralized world.
For more information regarding Valid’s IoT solutions, please visit https://valid.com/what-we-do/iot-and-track-trace/.
